Rand Paul: 'Fire the CBO' For Finding that Immigration Reform Reduces the Deficit

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Monday, 7/8/2013 2:00 pm

Sen. Rand Paul says he neither believes nor understands the Congressional Budget Office report which found that the Senate immigration bill would reduce the deficit, mostly through the new revenues that come with an expansion of the tax base.

The Kentucky Republican told conservative talk show host Lars Larson that he doesn’t comprehend the CBO analysts’ math… and therefore they should be fired.

He said that “we ought to fire the CBO” and “go ahead and just get it done” without paying attention to their fancy, elitist math.

Paul: The bill is going to cost $6.5 billion. How do you spend $6.5 billion and it saves money?

Larson: I don’t know. I asked a Senator about that and said, what’s the logic that the CBO uses that this will cut the deficit? He said that in the CBO’s report it doesn’t actually explain the mechanism. Is it that they think that more illegals made legal will pay taxes, or that their costs will be lower in American society or they won’t use as much welfare? Do you have any idea what they mean by ‘this will cut the deficit’?

Paul: No, but I don’t believe it. It’s sort of like, they tell me they’re going to give everybody free health care in the country and that’s supposed to cut the deficit too.

Larson: Well that was a lie that a lot of Americans bought not once but twice, didn’t they?

Paul: Yeah I’m not sure anybody believes that stuff anymore. It’s partly why we ought to fire the CBO and just sort of tell people what we want to do and let’s go ahead and just get it done.